We drove in silence for a few minutes. The city scrolled past—office blocks giving way to residential streets, then to industrial areas at the edge of London.
“You know,” Iris said, her tone casual. “Oliver and I have history.”
“Iris.” My voice carried a warning.
“What? I’m just making conversation.” She caught my eye in the mirror again. “One night. Years ago. He was quite…memorable.”
“It was a long time ago,” I muttered. “And it was a mistake.”
Iris laughed. “So cold. And here I thought we had something special.”
“We didn’t.”
“No.” A flash of emotion appeared on her face, but was gone as quickly as it had come. “I suppose we didn’t.”
She drove into the car park of a motel off the A2 that looked like it hadn’t been renovated since the eighties. Maybe longer.
“It’s clean—mostly—and the owner doesn’t ask questions,” Iris said, stopping in the parking area. “Cash only. No ID required.”
We got out. Phee was already walking toward the office, her stride stiff with barely contained emotion.
“Oliver.”
I turned. Iris had rolled down her window.
“Watch yourself with Lockhart.” Her voice had lost its flirty edge. She sounded almost sincere. “Whatever happened at that club—people don’t like to talk about it. That usually means it was bad. Really bad.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Iris.”
“You owe me.” The smile was back. “Don’t think I’ll forget.”
Her tires crunched on the gravel as she drove away.
Phee waited for me outside the motel office, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable.
“One night,” she said. “Years ago.”
“Phee…” I stepped closer and took her hands in mine. “There’s no one but you. You and Kiernan. That’s the only thing I want. The only thing I’ll ever want.”
She studied me, and whatever she found must have satisfied her, because the tension in her shoulders eased.
The room smelledlike industrial cleaner and stale cigarettes. There were two double beds with floral bedspreads that had seen better decades, a television from another era bolted to the dresser, and a window with blinds that were bent and broken in several places. I swept the space out of habit—checking the bathroom, the closet, behind the furniture. Phee did the same with her phone, scanning for listening devices. We found nothing but dust.
“Clear,” she said, dropping into a chair that looked less disgusting than the beds.
I sat in the other one. “We should talk about tonight.”
“I’ve found a few mentions of the Crucible, mainly in online forums.” She handed me her mobile. “It’s hardly the Thorned Thistle,” she added under her breath.
“I doubt many places would compare. If any.”
“What’s our plan?” she asked when I handed the device.
“We can’t exactly walk in there, asking questions about Kiernan Lockhart.”
“Right.”
“So we go in as a couple,” I said. “Curious. New to the scene. Looking for a club where we can explore whatwe want. The kind of dynamic we had at Greymarch. A triad. A dom who can handle both of us.”
